Hindsight is 20/20

“Democracy will not reform itself by some hidden or automatic process. It takes citizens to awaken from their inertia, apathy, or fear. No one else will demand change for us.” — Larry Diamond, III Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency

LAST Sunday, I was browsing through my Netflix catalog of documentary movies when I chanced upon “The Great Hack.” It was released in July 2019. It is about the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

A private military contractor, SCL Group, was behavioral research and strategic communications company with expertise in influencing mass behavior patterns. The company had been contracted for military and political operations across the globe in the late 1990s, including electioneering in the developing countries throughout the early 2000s.

For the company to move into the US elections, it formed Cambridge Analytica in 2012.

The scandal stems from the illicit harvesting of personal data and was used to create massive campaigns albeit approaching users in a personal manner. However, the mined big data ended up being used to create a huge artificial intelligence that reached the point of the disruption of democratic processes in the countries where they operated.

Facebook entered the picture when Cambridge Analytica bought personal data from the social media platform’s users. But as what we have all witnessed during the televised US Senate inquiry into the matter, Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg denied any complicity. He offered to “look into it.” We haven’t heard since from Zuckerberg after that inquiry.

Allow me to digress, if only to share with you my “eureka” moment in the movie. Again, yes, I may be a voracious reader but I admit I am kind of slow when it comes to technology. Watching the movie, it is easy to get lost with all the technical terms.

My father, Emilio, used to work as a civilian consultant for a certain major general who was assigned at Camp Olivas in San Fernando, Pampanga.

It was the time when Emilio, then a director of the Philippine Information Agency for Northern Mindanao, was named one of the “frozen” regional directors under then-President Corazon Aquino through Executive Order 120, series of 1987.

As far as I can recall, he worked as a “communications specialist” for the major general. I do, however, recall some military jargon he taught me. Yes, I was that kind of kid — a kid who asked a lot of questions outside my sphere of formal education.

I learned from him the terms plausible deniability, low-intensity conflict, psychological operations, credible reality, and other fancy-sounding terms. For this column, I’ll focus on the terms of psychological operations and plausible deniability.

On one hand, psychological operations are operations to “convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals,” as defined by the United States Marine Corps in Fort Bragg.

On the other hand, plausible deniability is defined as “denying responsibility for the actions due to the lack of substantial evidence of direct involvement, allows to shift the blame and to minimize reputational losses while maximizing the result of such actions.” This phrase was coined by the Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1960s to withhold information from senior officers to shield them from possible repercussions of their clandestine operations.

From the definitions of the two terms above, it is easy to realize that these are the foundations of great propaganda work.

Propaganda work targets our biases and emotions. With the national elections in 2022, you can bet your sweet “A” that these two military terms will be employed again in what has become a “hybrid communications warfare.”

As a public service, I would like to share with you a checklist in fighting misinformation by Carl Sagan called the “baloney detection.”

a.) Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”

Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.

b.) Arguments from authority carry little weight— "authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

c.) Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.

d.) Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way-station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.

e.) Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course, there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.

f.) If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise)—not just most of them.

g.) Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.

h.) Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle—an electron, say—in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.

Let us remember that it was the weaponization of social media platforms that stunned us way back in 2016. Misinformation or its more ubiquitous and infamous term “fake news” target powerful emotions within you — wonder, fear, greed, grief.

It was the weaponization of social media platforms that stunned us way back in 2016. Let us all learn our lesson and start the new decade with a 20/20 vision.

Not today

WHERE will these social media trolls go now that the midterm elections are over? I guess they will go into hibernation and will go on hyperdrive again in 2022. However, I must say I learned a lot from these trolls during the campaign period up to the very end.

On Friday, in their attempt at a Hail Mary pass, trolls circulated a supposed disqualification decision against Mayor Oscar Moreno that was allegedly penned by Comelec Commissioner Luie Tito Guia of the Commission’s 2nd Division.

The photos of the supposed hard copies of the decision were posted on Facebook first by the incorrigible DDS News-CDO and were further circulated on the social media platform through their most active trolls like “Jojo Cruz” and “Jose Ma. Guerrero.”

On that same Friday night, local reporters were all abuzz after receiving a forwarded copy of the same digital photos posted by DDS News-CDO earlier from Nicole Managbanag, media liaison for the Padayon Pilipino-Centrist-Centrist Democratic Party’s Jose Gabriel La Viña.

As to how Managbanag got hold of the digital copy that DDS News-CDO posted on its Facebook wall is for you to analyze. I will not deprive you of the delight in making that link.

Just a cursory scan of the document, any journalist worth his salt could see a lot of irregularities, up to a point where it’s almost glaring and apologetically fake.

The discrepancies:

• The order was supposedly promulgated on the International Labor Day — May 1.

• It is not printed on a legal-size bond paper.

• It does not have the dry seal of the Commission.

• Even the font used is not what the Commission uses in the documents.

• The order was not uploaded in the Commission’s official website.

All of that irregularities could be vetted with a cursory check on Google and plain common sense. However, when I saw that the order’s supposed ponente, Guia, I started to doubt that the document could be real.

As a backgrounder, the commissioner and I go a long way back. He was the chairman of an electoral advocacy group of lawyers and paralegals called Legal Network for Truthful Elections or Lente. This group tied up with the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism for a campaign project of Comelec for the 2013 midterm elections.

I thought, what better way to have the document checked than to directly ask the commissioner who supposedly signed the order.

“Officially I am saying that Resolution you showed me is fake. The second division did not issue that resolution,” Guia told me Friday night.

What the local media did, both collectively and individually, showed the trolls and their shadowy masters that when we say no to fake news, we mean it.

Kudos to all the journalists and broadcasters who did not bite the bait for a supposed scoop.

In the words of Arya Stark, the local media said “Not today,” to fake newsmakers.

Game of trolls

I ADMIT I was overwhelmed by how troll farms and their handlers took social media platforms in the 2016 national elections by storm. It was anything short of “shock and awe.” They dominated discussion boards, bullied thought leaders and mainstream news media into virtual silence, at least for a while.

But like my friends and colleagues, I was unprepared then. I didn’t know that there were people who would go to any lengths just so their principal would win. I didn’t know they would co-opt and sully free speech on the Internet. I admit I was naive.

With the mid-term elections just around the corner, we can be sure trolls will come out of the woodwork and go into hyperdrive again as they are wont to do. Even though its main handler has yet to come out (pun intended), we need to be ready for the expected coming onslaught of trolls in our social media accounts.

So, for those of you who have been hiding under a rock, this is how these vile creatures operate on social media platforms.

Trolls and their handlers employ a two-pronged approach against critical discussions — stifling dissent through fear and scripted messaging through fake news and black propaganda.

They stifle dissent through fear and intimidation. It got to a point where people were afraid to register their critical observations lest they would be the subject of a coordinated troll attack and be branded “delawan,” “adik” or terrorist protector. Obviously, there are people who have been exempt of this fear. Some of my colleague-friends fought toe-to-toe with these trolls. Still, a significant number of them just resigned not to engage the trolls.

They drown out public discussions with their slew of ad hominems, non-sequiturs, and other fallacious arguments that don’t have Latin names.

You may be tempted to dismiss these trolls as a bunch of uncouth and unloved creatures, most of them may well be but that’s not the point. Never make the mistake of underestimating these trolls. If there’s anything these trolls have been doing, it is anything but disorganized and uncalibrated.

My friend BenCyrus Ellorin has encapsulated their modus operandi on his wall quite brilliantly.

Step 1. Trolls would populate Cagayan de Oro social media groups–they have already begun. A case in point was when a Facebook user suddenly engaged my sarcastic comment on a thread at Bantay Kagay-an Facebook group.

I got this troll’s panty in a twist because I like the critical thinking La Viña brother over its principal. For context, this troll asked me to prove that I’m a real “real” Kagay-anon because it took my sarcastic quip as questioning the lineage of its principal in Cagayan de Oro.

I replied that I didn’t have to validate my lineage to something that is called a “Flick-g Spot.” It has since changed its handle to “Taga CDO Ka.”

When I first checked out the troll’s account, I found that it joined Facebook on Oct. 7, 2018. However, when I checked it again yesterday, it somehow turned the social media clock and now appears to have joined Facebook in July of 2015. It has 119 friends, all of whom (I should say “which”) have dubious names and equally suspicious profile photos.

Of the 12 pages it “liked,” eight were Cagayan de Oro-based and one page of a government official, Pompee La Viña.

Although I have responded to his attacks about me being an “impostor Kagay-anon,” it has nevertheless used my account as click-bait to create online noise.

Step 2. These trolls will create “click-bait” posts to generate traffic. This will then lead to the propagation of fake news.

So, despite my knowledge of trolls, I admit I fell right into its trap. I am now its click-bait to generate traffic since I am a legit netizen of Facebook with real people as friends. As my friends react to his ridiculous post on my thread in the group, this legitimizes its account, and by extension its dubious network of friends.

This troll can then start propagating fake news on the different Facebook groups of Cagayan de Oro City. Aside from Bantay Kagay-an, Taga CDO Ka has now joined Ang Baruganan Region 10, Ang Baruganan Philippines, and Iligan City “a walk to be remembered” v1.

According to Freedom House, the Philippines is among the other 30 countries across the globe that has deployed “manipulation to distort online information” (read: fake news).

These trolls don’t operate out of loyalty or dedication to their principals. Troll farms are big business.

A study by Chay Hofileña entitled “Fake accounts and manufactured reality on social media” shows these trolls are getting paid.

“In one page for commercial purposes, for example, repeated call-outs were made for ‘business partners’ who were required in 2015 to spend three to five hours daily on Facebook. Payment was supposed to range conservatively from P1,000 a day to P10,000 a month, with training provided,” Hofileña’s study reads in part.

There are even reports that some trolls even get paid as much as P2,000 to P3,000 a day just to copy-paste content. As Rappler has uncovered recently, trolls have uniform posts or comments on social media platforms.

“Different versions of what is supposed to be the one true fact can be manufactured, creating confusion and deep-seated schisms among groups who get to believe that their version of the truth is what is real and correct,” Hofileña’s study further reads.

So, how do we combat these trolls and their brand of twisted reality?

• Be critical with every post on social media. Use Google to vet, validate, and corroborate what is being asserted in a post or comment.
• Expose and oppose fake accounts, trolls, and bots. Bots are bits of code designed to mimic human users. They sound high-tech but believe me when I say these have been deployed in the country’s social media platforms as early as 2014.
• Actively reclaim your social media space by using apps that automatically label fake news and fake news websites as such. Let me plug the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines’ award-winning “fakeblok.”

Fakeblok is an extension app for Google Chrome web browsers and calls your attention when links from websites that tend to post fake news appear on your Facebook newsfeed. The app uses the database by the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility.

Again, let us not fall for fake news and reclaim our social media space. Good day and good luck, Kagay-an.

Pushing back

“WITH all three of us working together, truth does not stand a chance!” reads RJ “Thinking Pinoy” Nieto’s social media post, referring to the rest of the triumvirate, Margaux “Mocha” Uson and Sass Rogando “For the motherland” Sassot.

We are fighting back.

Together with other traditional news media organizations, we are going to fight back. We are not taking crap from anybody’s troll, bot, or an actual person but misinformed or just plain stupid and ignorant, anymore. Worse, are their handlers, most of whom used to work with traditional news media organizations.

I have personally witnessed some former colleagues in the industry who went from calling for an end to impunity and extrajudicial killings to shouting “delawan obosen, bias medias, and fake news” at every news article that doesn’t support the narrative they have set for themselves. (Shouting online is manifested in an all-caps post.) They who have allowed themselves to be trapped in a circular argument and embraced false dichotomies.

They bash news media for being biased. (Yes, there’s supposed to be “ed” after the word.) It is as if these people didn’t know the dynamics in a newsroom. I find it ludicrous that a former station manager of a regional newsgroup of a national TV network rant and lose his cool on his Facebook wall over news that his former station aired that debunked a lie his tatay said.

This is almost always the case, by the way. If a certain news item does not conform to the President’s ridiculous claims, then it must be “fake news.” If you argue against this administration, then you must be a dilawan or bayaran.

I confess that I did nothing to stop or at least, call out the rumormongers on social media. I was indifferent about it. I thought all the lies would just die out when confronted with the truth. But that didn’t happen and the people ought to know the real situation of what is happening to the country.

Last week, I heard some pretty compelling figures that convinced me, finally, to fight this lie-laden rhetoric online.

As of April, this year, there are 69 million Filipinos who are active social media users. Hootsuite has ranked the Philippines as the number one social media users who stay online at close to four hours each day. What is alarming is that the purveyors of fake news have a great number of following which, in turn, creates echo chambers. Unwitting users confuse echo chambers as an approbation of the distorted views of reality they post online.

It used to be that trolls, bots, and real accounts post misinformation or outright disinformation online. Now, referring to the quote above, they just declared war against the truth.

I, for one, cannot take it anymore. I didn’t cultivate my journalistic career just to upped by lying SOBs.

This paper has joined other traditional news media organizations in the fight against disinformation. We will debunk every lie posted online especially on social media networks. If my editor-in-chief and I fought the proliferation of disinformation individually, now entire news organizations will collectively fight back.

Enough is enough. We will resist the lies.

Hunting fake news redux

“We have to shame these f****** ignorant bastards.” – Herbie Gomez, editor-in-chief, Gold Star Daily, on how to deal with purveyors of fake news

THERE has a resurgence, of sorts, of fake news posts lately. I say “of sorts” because I have already an app that filters this digital garbage off my browser. If you’re interested, you can download this app at https://fakeblok.com/.

There are zero fake news website and posts on my social media account because of this app, except for an occasional post of friends who want their online friends to know that these are propaganda websites.

Lately, however, an undersecretary of the Department of Energy has been sharing fake news and has even admonished his online friends to be like UK’s Queen Elizabeth who supposedly praised Digong Dada based on a “news” article (false) published on altervista. The account has since been taken down by Google.

What concerns me is that high ranking government executives have been sharing this propaganda website on social media lately. There’s Mayor Richard Gomez who shared the same fake news the DOE undersecretary shared.

As a public service, I screen captured the website and pointed to the features lacking for a legitimate news website. Yesterday, I checked that particular post again and saw that it has been shared 136 times. Now, that has encouraged me since it tells me that many people have grown tired of the lies and propaganda that are passed off as news on social media platforms.

Hence, I will share again the tips I’ve learned on how to hunt these propaganda websites.

So how can we scrutinize a news website or a post on social media platforms in particular and the Internet in general? Here are some tips:

1. Check if the uniform resource locator (URL). URLs are the web addresses of the articles on the Internet. Many propagandists have intentionally made web addresses to look these are from legitimate news media organizations. Examples of these include ABCnews.com.co, Bloomberg.ma, cnn-trending.com, NBCNews.com.co, washingtonpost.com.co, etc.

Notice that most of the fake news websites have a suffix “.co.”

2. Read beyond the headline of a news post. I, as I assume you do too, see these almost all the time on Facebook. People sharing “news articles” based on the headline but have not really read the entire article. Worse, they will caption the link with an inappropriate comment because as I said they haven’t really read the article.
3. While you’re reading a news article, check for exaggerations. Fake news is meant to rile up or elicit strong emotions to drive web traffic and further inflamed on social media platforms. Naturally, the fake news would have exaggerations.
4. Check if the data presented in the “news article” is corroborated or supported by experts in the particular field or other news media websites. Okay, that sounds more daunting of a task as I would have preferred. Maybe this acronym can help GIN (Google It, Numbnuts).
5. This next tip will sound idiotic but believe me many have done this–sharing a news article without checking the date of publication. Digong Dada’s drummer boy Peter Lavina did it by posting a photo of a rape victim meant to rile up support for the war on drugs. However, the photo was from another continent, Brazil and from an entirely different timeline. So before you share, check out the date and location, huh?
6. Always cross-check the site with other reliable sources on the web. Real news articles may differ in angling, perspective, or even syntax but these will always have the same basic accounting of the story. Like if there are two reporters of different news organizations covering a story, they might approach the story differently but they will always be, essentially, the same story.

You may find it hard to believe but there has been a deluge of fake photos on the Internet too.

You need to look at the following to spot a fake photo:

1. Shadows. I summarize photography as the art of taming shadows and light. Look for inconsistencies in the subjects’ shadow in the photo. For example, if the shadow of a man in the photo is leaning at a 45-degree angle, everything else in the frame should have the same 45-degree angle-leaning shadows.
2. Light source. Inversely from shadows, the light source of the whole frame should be global. The bounce of the light source on the subjects in the frame should be consistent with the shadows these set. This means the light source should be at the opposite end of the subject’s shadow.
3. Discoloration. This usually happens when a subject introduced to a photo is a clone of a subject from a different photo. If you can see discoloration on the edges of a subject in a photo (read: inconsistent color from the main frame), chances are the photo has been manipulated with a photo editing software.
4. Pixilation. This is akin to the presence of discoloration in a photo, except that instead of color inconsistency there’s inconsistency in pixels of the photo. This happens when the photo editor clones a subject from a different photo and placing it on a new photo without considering the image size (read: dots per inch or pixels per inch) of the photo the photo editor cloned it from.

Ad for the wishy-washy

“Maybahay, ******** ko 13 oras – Garantisado: buong gabi ligaya.” – www.borsa.ru

CALL it what you will but because of the kind of vibes this administration emanates, its spin doctors and apologists often never fail to follow suit — with “funny” repercussions, if I may add.

I call it the steamy and macho kind of vibes.

Last week, one of the outspoken (which most of whom usually are) apologists of Digong Dada, La Salle political science Prof. Antonio P. Contreras, posted a public rant of sorts on his Facebook wall.

“Rappler complains about the ethics of a broadcaster allegedly threatening one of its reporters, but it doesn’t even bother choosing the kind of ads it allows to be published on its page. Horribly disgusting! John Nery must be furious at this obscenity,” he first posted.

The rant was about a story of Rappler reporting about yet another Digong drummer boy RJ Nieto goading Palace spokesperson Harry Roque to throw hollow blocks at Rappler journalist Pia Ranada on live talk radio over DwIZ 882AM. The quote I cited at the beginning of this column is the exact wording of the ad Contreras pointed out as “horribly disgusting.”

As to why the great Contreras singularly called out Kagay-anon John Nery, I still cannot connect. Nery is the editor-in-chief of Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Internet content and is in no way connected or involved with Rappler’s website. You can even call the two news organizations competitors.

Moving on, naturally, the public post went viral. Most of those who shared (me included), pointed out that the ad that appeared below the Rappler article was a result of Google Adsense’s logarithm. To break it down, the ads that appear on certain parts of any website that avails this ad logarithm depends on the kind of websites you usually browse. It is like an artificial intelligence of sorts. Google Adsense profiles the user according to his or her browsing history.

So, based on that particular ad, the algorithm of Google Adsense profiled the user to be a sex-craving middle-aged male with a limp member. I posted this explanation with Contreras’ public rant and most of the others who shared the “hard” post of Contreras, as well.

Before you judge, it is not a pornographic ad. As I understand it, it is an ad for a sex-performance enhancement drug. In short, it’s anti-erectile dysfunction medicine. Except for the one vulgar word in the ad, I say its totally natural to be able to “get up” when an occasion “rises” for it.  The ad is not “horribly disgusting” to me.

However, exactly eight minutes after his second edit of this post, Contreras added this “disclaimer”: “Note: This photo was only shared to me by a friend.

“Update:

“So, it looks like Google Ads played a cruel game on Rappler on this one. I just learned that ads like the one that appears below (are) driven by the preferences of the reader. On this case, the one who originally took a photo of this and shared it.

“In any case, legitimate and so-called decent and morally upright pages, like what Rappler purports to be, should now really think hard before availing of this facility of Google to avoid embarrassing optics like this one. As parties who claim to be paragons of virtue, knowing that Google randomly loads ads like this, and for Rappler to earn money from it, is somewhat problematic.”

My Facebook friends opened the same Rappler link in their respective browsers to point out what the great Contreras cannot seem to grasp. In a fraternal cousin’s browser, the same ad spot displayed a website that offers “quirky and stylish” home decors. In another distant relative’s try, a website selling ready-to-wear apparels. Mine? Well, it was just a “boring” in-house ad of Rappler calling for its consumers to uphold press freedom and advocate for fearless journalism.

Contreras, ser, a different ad appears depending on what a user regularly browses. Rappler (which didn’t claim to be a paragon of virtue, bitidub) cannot possibly filter what appears on its Google Adsense spot. Do you even know how many active users are on the Internet? Each of those users will see a different ad on the same spot that you riled about.

To those who do not know Contreras, he specializes on political theory and analysis, cultural theory and politics, and the politics of everyday lives. It is safe to say Contreras is a smart noodle (no pun intended). However, I cannot wrap around the fact that a smart guy like him still doesn’t get how Internet AI works.

If you want lewd, sexist, and vulgar language, you only need to listen to the President, Martin Andanar, Salvador Panelo, RJ Nieto, and other functionaries of this administration, Mr. Contreras. Now, those people have said an appalling amount of vulgarity on live TV and radio.

Plus, “maybahay” is vernacular for a wife. What is so vulgar about finding food supplements online just so you can satisfy your spouse in bed? Vulgar would be a city mayor saying he should be the first to fornicate with a corpse so that her beauty won’t be wasted is, Contreras.

Let’s go back to the Contreras’ hard stand yet limp reasoning. You don’t have to be ashamed of what you browse on the Internet. The Internet has been the best thing there is since the invention of the loin clothe.

In closing, I’d like to give you an unrequited advice, Mr. Contreras. Don’t just thrust away in your keyboard looking for “hard” drugs for your “friend’s” limp biscuit problem. As you have shown quite eloquently, one cannot trust everything that is on the Internet. I mean, guaranteed “13 hours”? I cannot imagine the chaffing involved in that.

Try lots of sibuyas bombay (bulb onion) in your diet. If that fails, try banging your “friend’s” limp appendage with your front door.

Of satires and lampoons

“Political satire is ridicule dedicated to exposing the difference between appearance and reality in public life.” -Robert Mankoff

THERE’S another kind of news circulating on social media platforms but it’s not fake. Far from it. It’s satire news.

However, you have to read it in order to appreciate it. You can’t appreciate satire if you’ll only read its “headline.”

I’m bringing this up in light of Sen. Joel Villanueva’s Senate Bill 1492 or “An Act Penalizing the Malicious Distribution of False News and Other Related Violations. It is a serious law.”

“The passage of this bill will encourage our citizens, especially public officers, to be more responsible and circumspect in creating, distributing and/or sharing news. Addressing national and global concerns should not be made more complicated by false news calculated to cause disunity, panic, chaos, and/or violence,” the bill’s explanatory note reads in part.

It carries a pretty heavy penalty for any thinking Pinoy (pun intended) found guilty–fines ranging from P100,000 to P5 million, and one to five years imprisonment.

Based on this proposed law, fake news is defined as “an information causing or tending to cause panic, division, chaos, violence, hate,” and those “exhibiting or tending to exhibit a propaganda to blacken or discredit one’s reputation.”

Therein lies the problem. The definition is vague. What about political satire? Can the law make that distinction? It’s like the “no bomb jokes” in terminals and airports. What if I tell a bomb poem, or a bomb limerick? Technically, it is not a bomb joke but can the security personnel make that distinction?

Merriam-Webster defines satire as “a way of using humor to show that someone or something is foolish, weak, or bad. It is humor that shows the weaknesses or bad qualities of a person, government, or society.”

Satire is like the jester speaking truth to the king and his royal court. Let me remind you we have some of the most close-minded and “pikon” people in this administration. What will happen to the likes of Professional Heckler or the Superficial Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines when Villanueva’s bill is passed into law?

The communications team of this administration, nay spinners, scares the bejeesus out of me. They have a vast mass of followers but there is no informed political discourse in their brand of punditry. They present so much information on social media and pass it off as true, and they have the money and resources behind each and every article they post. Methinks, without satire, the entire public discourse in the republic will collapse.

I can’t even understand why this administration’s supporters are not so receptive of satirical pieces when their principal is the embodiment of sarcasm–hyperbole and all.

Alison Dagnes, a political science teacher at Shippensburg University, got it spot on when she wrote: “Political (satire) is primarily the mark of the underdog. It’s essentially a complaint against oppression. It’s a complaint against the power structure.”

Satire sharpens critique.

‘Facebooking’

ABOUT a fortnight ago, a Facebook group account, Duterte Today, screen grabbed my post and shared this on its wall. For a Kagay-anon to be trolled by somebody from Metro Davao, I must say is quite flattering.

I had posted my usual mundane satirical post after aggressively hunting fake news articles and photos, which has been this administration’s hallmark by the way.

Anyway, I posted: “There has been a deluge of friend and message requests ever since I amped up my fake news hunting. Good luck with that. I don’t ****ing know you. Pfft.”

Duterte Today captioned its screen grab of my post with: “Char. Swerte mo nga umabot 15 likes post mo this time.”

It’s fine because I set the post to public, anyway. Also, the Duterte Today page has a username of @indaysara. If that is not flattering I don’t know what is.

Of course, I don’t think Davao City’s mayor and presidential daughter has got something to do about the troll-like screen grabbing but you have to appreciate the “down time” the people of Davao are paying for this kind of sophomoric social media attack.

I chided a friend in Davao for their city information office for having too much time on its hands while on the people’s employ. The asswipe must be reeling with its/his/her newfound power.

Sorry for the digression. What I really wanted to say is that the incident made me think of the past (cue in: harp)–when I joined Facebook, what I expected to get out of it and what it has become.

Have I, indeed, turned into a “like whore?” Have I let my Facebook account define the person I am supposed to be in real-time? Did I let my inert psychological need to belong rule over what I really am?

All these questions pushed me to look back into my Facebook history, hoping to find some answers or at least clues to the person I really am.

I first joined the Facebook social networking site in 2008. Yes. When Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin launched Facebook in 2004, it wasn’t called a social media platform yet. They meant Facebook to be about connecting people across the globe.

My circle of real-time friends then were still agog over Friendster. They thought it weird for me then to invite them to Facebook. Before that, I used Mirabilis’ ICQ social network.

It was really fun connecting with friends and relatives abroad or from across the country. We exchanged photos of how we look like at the moment.

However, all of that changed when Facebook became a weaponized voyeur’s instrument. It started with “lurker” accounts. People made a different account and followed the same people in their original account just so they could “lurk” on their friends. And when the 2010 elections came, lurker accounts became troll accounts. The rest, as the old cliche goes, is history.

But I will continue my presence in Facebook. I have been using it to vent my frustrations on–not for likes, mind you. It has become a sort of real-time, online, journal for me.

So, do I feel slighted with the Duterte Today screen grab? No, because I think we have different perspectives and agenda when it comes to going online.

To my dear readers (yes, all 243 of you), if you are also a Facebook friend, following, or even lurking me online please understand that you are in no way obliged to like, comment, or do anything. What I post on my wall is an expression.

It’s really nothing personal. It’s not about you.

It’s just me.

Hunting fake news (2)

“You furnish the pictures, I’ll provide the war.” – William Randolph Hearst, New York World owner

HERE’S the second and last installment of my series on hunting fake news. Purveyors of fake news almost usually also post accompanying fake photos to further bolster the “legitimacy” of their stories.

Fake photos?! It’s hard to imagine, right? It’s because you would think photographs are precise representations of events. Well, unless you’ve been hiding under a rock in the last decade, photographs can be manipulated.

However, in this age of photoshop and other digital photo manipulation applications, you might find it surprising that photo manipulation is not actually new.

It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. It means photographs evoke emotions faster than an article can because it is, after all, visual. You don’t need to read anything. You just look at it and wham–emotions start to flow.

The quote above is an actual reply of Hearst to a cable message of his illustrator assigned in Cuba in 1897, Frederic Remington.

Hearst, for reasons only known to him, had wanted to ignite a war between the US and Spain. Cuba at that time had an insurrection against its Spanish colonizers. However, Remington cabled Hearst: “Everything quiet. There is no trouble here (Cuba). There will be no war. Wish to return.”

So when USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor less than three weeks since the cable message exchange, Remington illustrated the boat as it sank. Hearst wasted no time in using the illustration to foment war between the US and Spain. This was reflected in a phrase he popularized in his newspaper, New York World, “Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain!”

Spain had nothing to do with the sinking of USS Maine but Hearst made it appear in his articles that it was result of a direct attack of Spain against American forces.

Within three months, the Spanish-American war was raging hard. The Philippines, being a Spanish colony that time, had to be “conquered” by the US as spoils of that war. After that war, the US became a global power to contend with and ended Spain’s old-brand of imperialism.

In a way, bad journalism–in this instance, a fake photo–was the reason why the Philippines was colonized by the US. By the way, a small digression if you will. Hearst was caricatured best in Orson Welles’ magnum opus “Citizen Kane.”

It would have been dramatic that the “new world” conquered the “old world” except that because the war was fueled by a fake photo, it was nothing short of tragic.

Talking of tragic, here in the Philippines now, no less than the government’s communication team has joined in purveying fake news and photos.

The Philippine News Agency posted a story on how the military is having difficulty with close quarter battle in flushing out the Maute Group from Marawi City. I knew the correspondent who wrote the article, so I believed the article. However, the editors, in their incomprehensible wisdom, posted an accompanying photo of an American G.I. patrolling the hinterlands of Vietnam.

Not to be left behind, newly appointed Presidential Communications Operations Office Assistant Secretary Margaux “Mocha” Uson posted a photo of the Honduran police on their knees praying in the hopes of rallying support for government troops who are currently fighting the Maute Group in Marawi City.

When the fake photo was pointed out, Uson brushed off criticisms by saying the photo was mere symbolism of the point she was making or a “representative photo.” Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if her succeeding blogs will not carry any titles–she is already entitled.

They have since taken down the photo and issued an erratum of sorts.

As for my colleagues in media, either they be in private or government employ, I have this to say: If we keep on repeating the same mistakes in a chosen field for a considerable length of time then maybe it’s time to seriously consider another craft or trade. You’re not contributing to the well-being of the planet and your species.

Now that we have the history of fake photos out of the way, let’s discuss how to hunt for fake photos on social media platforms.

But before we discuss knowing what to look for in fake photos, I’d like first to discuss how photos are being faked.

1. Drawing or staging. Unlike studio or glam photography, photojournalists are not supposed to be “directing” a crime scene. The photo should be an accurate depiction of what happened. I have witnessed this once. A photojournalist, at he was back then, asked one of the protesters in a rally to move closer to where he was standing so he could capture a more “provocative” frame. This practice, by the way, is frowned upon by professional photojournalists.
2. Post production alterations. This is where photoshop or other photo editing apps comes in. Sometimes photojournalists would think a column of smoke from a burning building isn’t quite fluffy or big enough they’d clone that column of smoke and paste it on the same frame. There have been times also when photojournalists introduce another subject from an old photo and pass it off as one frame.
3. Inaccurate captioning. It’s quite unfortunate that people in this administration’s communication team have been fooling us with foreign photos with inaccurate captioning, as what we have been witnessing lately. We have also seen our “friends” on Facebook posting photos of bomb victims in the past and captioned it as happening (read: ATM) currently in Marawi City. As in news articles, the captioning the real date of when the photo was captured is also of the same import.

You can also always use Google’s “image search” feature if there’s something suspicious about a photo. I used this in the Vietnam war photo PNA used to pass off as happening in Marawi City. I felt the photo was so familiar but could not put my finger on it. So, I downloaded the photo, fed that photo in Google’s image search, and voila–it was a photo of an American G.I. patrolling the hinterlands of Vietnam.

If the photo is sent to you via email, you can check the details of the photo by accessing its metafile data. You access this by right-clicking the photo’s thumbnail in your file browser. A dialogue box will pop out. Left click on properties.

So, in spotting a fake photo you need to inspect the following:

1. Shadows. I summarize photography as the art of taming shadows and light. Look for inconsistencies in the subjects’ shadow in the photo. For example, if the shadow of a man in the photo is leaning at a 45 degree angle, every thing else in the frame should have the same 45 degree angle-leaning shadows.
2. Light source. Inversely from shadows, the light source of the whole frame should be global. The bounce of the light source on the subjects in the frame should be consistent with the shadows these set. This means the light source should be at the opposite end of the subject’s shadow.
3. Discoloration. This usually happens when a subject introduced to a photo is a clone of a subject from a different photo. If you can see discoloration on the edges of a subject in a photo (read: inconsistent color from the main frame), chances are the photo has been manipulated with a photo editing software.
4. Pixilation. This is akin to the presence of discoloration in a photo, except that instead of color inconsistency there’s inconsistency in pixels of the photo. This happens when the photo editor clones a subject from a different photo and placing it on a new photo without considering the image size (read: dots per inch or pixels per inch) of the photo the photo editor cloned it from.

Now that you know how to distinguish fake news and photos from the real ones, you might ask what am I to do with this new skill. You need to call fake news and photos out. As for those who are share-a-holics: Always check and verify what you share on your wall.

Like the fair warning I posted on my wall weeks ago, I warned friends, relatives, acquaintances, and colleagues that I will be more aggressive in pointing out shared fake news and photos on my Facebook account. I will screen-capture any friend’s post sharing a fake news, and post it with a stamp “Fake News.” Plus, I blocked their accounts from mine.

It’s all worth it, I promise you. Ever since I amped up my hunting for fake news and photos on my Facebook account and called these out for the garbage that they are, the news feeds on my wall have starkly improved.

There are no more fake news except for sporadic trolling on the threads of my posts and a deluge of friends and message requests. But, hey, don’t forget you have full control of your social media account. Like I said in my post: Good luck with that. I don’t [expletive] know you.

Now, I’m enjoying Facebook again.

Hunting fake news (1)

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” – Dr. Seuss

AS promised, I will be sharing to you, my dear readers, tips on how to hunt for fake news. More importantly, what to do about it. Understandably, this will take more than one column. Here’s the first of two parts on fake news.

Ever since social media platforms became “weaponized” for political gain, fake news has been the buzz word all over the blogosphere. I cited an example about Philippine News Agency’s fake news article entitled “95 nations in 3rd UPR convinced no EJKs in PHL” in my last column. I also discussed PNA’s attempt to cover it up with another article–slightly reworded but equally deceiving “PHL’s human rights situation commended at UPR.” A government functionary said they were commended by the UN Human Rights Commission on its 27th Universal Period Review. They didn’t. The team was commended on particular points like what it has done to combat human trafficking but other than that the review pretty much grotesque. To say that UPR27 commended the country for its human rights situation is a lie meant to deceive the more gullible, Facebook “like” addicts and share-a-holics.

Then last week, another seeming example propped up.

While terrorists burned buildings and soldiers dropping bombs in Marawi City last week, Manila-based Philippine Daily Inquirer’s web platform posted five photos which supposedly depicted the aftermath of the siege of the city. However, these photos were actually outdated and some of the photos were not even taken or depicting Marawi City.

An enterprising troll made a meme on PDI’s editorial gaffe which naturally trended on social media platforms. I say “naturally” because the meme obviously meant to rile up netizens. A troll even actually suggested to burn down PDI’s offices in Makati.

On May 24, 6:11 pm, PDI’s web platform Inquirer.net posted an erratum on it. They claimed the photos they posted came from a reliable source but before they could complete their vetting process or did a simple reverse-image search, they posted all the five photos anyway.

“That was a mistake, and we apologize unreservedly,” PDI’s erratum reads. They then offered to impose “necessary sanctions” to ensure the same mistake will not happen again.

For me, the enterprising troll who pointed PDI’s mistake did nothing wrong although the motive behind the meme is suspicious at best. I think it is healthy to point out mistakes in news articles. News, after all, is communication and the process isn’t completed without feedback.

I have pointed out on my Facebook wall that that is how a professional news organization acts when confronted with their mistakes. However, I would be remiss if I don’t also point out the difference between misinformation and disinformation.

Disinformation and misinformation are two different animals. Misinformation is inadvertent (read: wala gituyo; hindi sinadya) while disinformation is deliberate (read: gituyo; sinadya). The former is unintentionally inaccurate while the latter is intentionally false.

As National Union of Journalists in the Philippines director and Interaksyon editor Nonoy Espina puts it: “Wrong news is a whole universe away from fake news.”

So how can we scrutinize a news post, whether this be a misinformation or a blatant disinformation, on social media platforms in particular and the Internet in general.

1. Check if the uniform resource locator (URL). URLs are the web addresses of the articles in the Internet. Many propagandists have intentionally made web addresses to sound like it is of a legitimate news media organizations. Examples of these include: ABCnews.com.co, Bloomberg.ma, cnn-trending.com, NBCNews.com.co, washingtonpost.com.co, etc.

Notice that most of the fake news web sites have a suffix “.co.”

2. Read beyond the headline of a news post. I, as I assume you do to, see these almost all the time on Facebook. People sharing “news articles” based on the headline but have not really read the entire article. Worse, they will caption the link with an inappropriate comment because as I said they haven’t really read the article.
3. While you’re reading a news article, check for exaggerations. Fake news are meant to rile up or elicit strong emotions to drive web traffic and further inflamed on social media platforms. Naturally, fake news would have exaggerations.
4. Check if the data presented on the “news article” is corroborated or supported by experts on the particular field or other news media web sites. Okay, that sounds more daunting of a task as I would have preferred. Maybe this acronym can help: GIN (Google It, Numbnuts).
5. This next tip will sound idiotic but believe me many have done this–sharing a news article without checking the date of publication. Digong Dada’s drummer boy Peter Lavina did it by posting a photo of a rape victim meant to rile up support for the war on drugs. However, the photo was from another continent, Brazil and from an entirely different timeline. So before you share, check out the date, huh?
6. Always cross-check the site with other reliable sources on the web. Real news articles may differ in angling, perspective, or even syntax but these will always have the same basic accounting of the story. Like if there are two reporters of different news organizations covering a story, they might approach the story differently but they will always be, essentially, the same story.

Now, why would anybody deliberately lie to you on the Internet, you ask.

The answer is simple. As I have written at the start of this column: Social media platforms have been weaponized to serve political interests. It’s no longer just a virtual hangout for your friends.

So be a responsible netizen.

Let me leave you with these words of wisdom from veteran reporter Ellen Tordesillas: “There’s no excuse for spreading lies even if you don’t like a person. If you have to spread lies to protect or promote your principal, that means there is something wrong not only with your principal but also with you.” (to be continued)